I have lots to write about, or at least I think I do, but for some reason I’m having trouble putting fingertip to keyboard. There are lots of things swimming in my head and yet…

Before I get to any of those things I have to write this post.

I’m warning you, it’s going to be long, personal, and all about MEEEEE. I’m going to go back to the beginning and you might be bored to tears but I feel like I should provide some context. I hope I don’t regret this. Here’s me crossing my fingers.

OK.

What happened was a few years ago I decided to break up with Jesus. A clean break. Nothing fancy, nothing overdramatic. I just needed some time and space. As far as boyfriends go, Jesus is a time-consuming one. First of all, he’s never there. Don’t give me that bullshit about how Jesus is Always with Us because when was the last time you had a face to face talk with your Lord and Saviour? Believe me, I have no problems grasping the metaphysical mumbo jumbo but I still think that you can’t treat a relationship with God the same way you treat a relationship with another human being.

That’s a discussion for another time, though. I’m getting off track. I left the religion and, therefore, the church, much to my devout parents’ dismay. I tried to tell them, look, I’m just trying to figure things out. I never said I wouldn’t get back together with Jesus. But my mom said, well, how can you figure things out if you DON’T GO TO CHURCH? (Why is it that people always make that argument whenever someone leaves the church? Anyone who has left the church knows how stupid a statement that is, but the people making the statement never do.)

Then my dad got sick and almost died. He was rescued by staggering achievements in medical science and a bit of luck (or providence, depending on whom you ask). And after that all happened, I came to this realization that circumstance had robbed me of a certain luxury that so many of my peers have: the luxury of taking your parents/family for granted. I guess this normally doesn’t happen until later in life, usually after one or more parents is actually dead.

I always try to make a point of learning from other people’s mistakes. I also try to learn from the near misses.

I came out of that period of time in one’s youth when one wants to distance oneself from one’s family/parents as much as possible. I realized that I am not as independent as I thought I was and that I need my family to survive in a multitude of ways, blah-blah-community-cakes.

I should be clear: during my sojourn from the religion, I never stopped thinking about spirituality and related things. I never stopped trying to figure it out. Believe it or not, even my mom realized this, in time. She said, Jenny, I can tell you’ve found some peace. I was shocked when she said that, and a little more shocked when I realized she was right.

I decided to return to my old church community for two main reasons. First, that community had supported my family during the Time of Almost Death and I figured I owed it another chance. Second, religion and faith is a huge thing in my biological family on both sides. Faith is what brought my great-grandmothers over the ocean decades ago, faith is what sustains my mother, who lives a challenging, difficult life with grace and courage.

For better or for worse, this religion/faith/church is my culture. It’s where I come from, and maybe it’s not where I’m supposed to be going. I cannot for the life of me recall when or where I read this, but many Buddhists will tell those interested in Buddhist practice not to abandon their cultural religious traditions entirely, but rather to recognize the way Buddhism augments all religions, expands upon them. Or something. As I said, I don’t remember.

It’s not that I’m a Buddhist; it’s just that I want to honour the strengths of my forebears and try to find a place in the faith that formed the framework of their lives.

So that’s it. No transformation/conversion story. Just a decision to engage myself in the church community in addition to my private study. I went back to the church (and indeed the faith) with some rules. The first rule: no guilt. I wasn’t going to let the church or the people in it guilt me into anything. Anything I was going to do had to come naturally — praying, giving, volunteering, bible reading, whatever. So much of my childhood was spent feeling guilty — not for doing bad things, because, while I was quite a little jerk most of the time, I didn’t do any of the big ticket sins like have sex or drink or smoke. The guilt I felt most of the time had to do with religious practice, i.e. reading the bible, praying, having the “quiet time,” i.e. not doing those things regularly. I also felt guilty for not “feeling it” in church or in worship services or whatever. That I wasn’t “growing spiritually” the way other kids were. I was too busy feeling guilty for not being a good enough Christian that I didn’t have time feel guilty for being an ASSHOLE. Which I was. Which is not to say I’m not one now, but I’m trying to keep it down to a dull roar these days.

Anyway, now I’m not holding myself to that bullshit. I go to church, because I like to see my friends and hold babies. If I daydream during the sermon, I don’t beat myself up about it. I don’t take notes, and I don’t feel guilty about that, either. That’s the deal I struck with myself, and maybe even God. OK, I’ll come back to church, but there’s no pressure.

Maybe you’re reading this and you think it’s all pomo crap. If so: too bad, bitches. I don’t care, because I spent too long caring about that sort of thing and poisoning myself in the process.

Love,
Jenny

P.S. GOD IS A SHE
P.P.S. (Not really, I just said that to freak you out)
P.P.P.S. (But that doesn’t mean you can keep referring to God with male pronouns)
P.P.P.P.S. (At least, not on my blog watch)

Is this the same Calgary-based Beyond magazine that I read in junior high? It’s still around? Amazing! Has anyone read it recently? What’s it like? I remember enjoying it a great deal as a teenager, but back then I believed a lot of things I don’t now, so who knows. I really loved it, though — it was thought-provoking and loaded with truthiness. I’m normally a pack-rat when it comes to saving old magazines, I wonder if I still have some of those old copies… probably not.

I remember it being far more blatantly Christian back in the day. I’d order a subscription to find out, but just spent $25 on Geez and I don’t know if I can justify the expense right away. I’m super curious, though.

One more thing: with all my talk of feminism in the previous post, I wanted but forgot to link to an article that beautifully exposes the silliness of (most) people who claim to be not-feminists.

It is about knowing that a woman is the equal of a man in art, at work, and under the law, whether you say it out loud or not — but for God’s sake start saying it out loud already. You are a feminist.

Sarah Bunting’s Yes, You Are. Take heed, my friends.

I’m reading this anthology my brother read in the course of his youth ministry studies, a volume called Stories of Emergence: Moving from Absolute to Authentic, edited by SCP favourite Mike Yaconelli. The back cover summary reads, “Follow the stories of people who were steeped in their beliefs… and walk with them on their journeys out of those beliefs.” I haven’t read them all — so far only Tony Jones (another SCP, um, favourite), and I liked his a lot. No beef with the Jonester for me. Today.

No, my beef is (however unsurprisingly) with the “former feminist.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green writes about her “Personal Journey through Feminism,” where she begins as a second-waver in the ’70s, becomes a feminist pro-lifer in the late ’80s and eventually abandons the feminist mantle altogether. She writes:

I even began to think that the whole theory was erroneous — that men and women rise and fall together, their situation affected by race or class, but not gender. A housemaid has more in common with her short-order cook husband and her bricklayer brother than with the wealthy female lawyer whose toilet she cleans. (143)

I totally agree. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT FEMINIST THEORISTS ARE SAYING THESE DAYS. I think what gets me most about this essay is that it’s in a book that will be read in bible schools all across the continent and 19-year-old boys headed for ministry will be reading this and accepting Mathewes-Green’s portrait of feminism as the ultimate, correct one. That’s pretty damn terrifying.

There’s a reason women of my generation separate ourselves from from our mothers’ feminism. Because our ideology has changed and grown! Because we stand upon the foundations laid by women in the first and second waves of feminism and honour the efforts and progress and achievements of the women who established that females were persons under the law, able to own property, hold jobs, and run for political office. But we will also expand our ideas and conceptions.

The only third-wave feminist voice she cites is Naomi Wolf. Maybe Mathewes-Green should try reading feminist tomes that don’t appear on the New York Times bestseller list, and then she’d get a better picture of the shape of things feminist.

The feminisms of today are no longer so myopic that they ignore the plight of women who are not white, middle-class North Americans. Indeed, feminisms of today are hesitant to bind women together in a commonality of experience. “Of all the ways that genuine injustice can appear,” Mathewes-Green writes, “gender seemed increasingly the most spurious grid to use.” My feminist friends and I know that there is no common women’s experience any more than there is a common male experience. Not all women give birth, not all women are mothers, not all women menstruate, not all women work. I am a white Canadian woman, born to middle-class, educated parents, I have far more agency and opportunity and freedom than a large percentage of men in the world. Feminists of my generation and background are not blind to this fact, though Mathewes-Green seems to think that we are.

Has Mathewes-Green even heard of bell hooks, who, in the ’80s, pushed second-wave feminism beyond the paradigm of equating success with equality with the ruling white male class? Is she at all familiar with the feminisms that focus on eliminating sexism which operates as one of many oppressive structures in society?

Mathewes-Green creates a very interesting metaphor in this essay — the Superman cape. She writes:

Feminism is only one of its many expressions; the causes, as I said, are interchangeable. It’s an intoxicating costume. For one thing, the Superman cape works like an invisibility cloak in reverse: put it on and you cant’ see your own faults. Instead, you see everyone else’s…

Superman-Cape attitude has now natural enemies. If opposition arises — and self-made heroes secretly hope it will — it just proves that the hero threatens the powers-that-be…

…it blinds us to our own faults, so exhilarated are we by the faults of others. We develop contempt for others and describe them and their beliefs in the language of insult…

The Superman costume is like the shirt of Nessus, a wedding gift to Hercules that was supposedly charged with supernatural power. In reality, it was saturated with poison… I began to see that feminism was bad for me. It inculcated feelings of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. It filled me with self-perpetuating anger. It blinded me to the good that men do and the bad that women do. It made me think that men and women were enemies, when we actually have a mutual Enemy — who delights in any human discord. (142-143)

I actually like the Superman cape metaphor. As I read Mathewes-Green’s description of the phenomenon, I experience a certain level of conviction. In the throes of ideology I do often become blind to my own faults. I have, too often, stooped to a “language of insult,” as indeed I may have in this very post.

But these have nothing to do with my feminism and everything to do with the fact that I suck.

The Superman cape can be worn in the name of many causes, as Mathewes-Green writes. I have seen it worn in the name of feminism, anarchism, conservatism and, of course, Christianity. Does that fact by itself condemn any one of those causes?

Feminism can, should be, is subject to criticism. Without critical thought it could never expand and grow (like some other movements I can think of). But what Mathewes-Green seems to have missed is that feminism has responded to critics like she, and is changing. It’s too bad she jumped ship before she realized that, though. And too bad all the bible school students reading this anthology won’t be reading bell hooks, too.

I normally prefer to pontificate about my own thoughts and feelings and leave the blogging of American Christian right tomfoolery and jackassery to capable others within the blogosphere, but this is way, way too good not to pass on.

Take this, Brokeback Mountain: now there’s Sodom and Gomorrah the movie. (Via Livejournal’s Dark Christianity community, where a commenter appropriately remarks that it’s a shame Kirk Cameron isn’t in this flick, it’s the only thing that would have made it awesomer.)

Here’s the plot synopsis:

Provoked by temptation, a tumultuous affair is about to begin, and it will burn as deep as the desires that brought it to life. Michael Gooden is a God- fearing man who has been married for eighteen years. He has a wonderful wife and two teenage children. But one day he is cornered by an ultimatum that will unleash the desires pent up inside of him. Michael begins an affair that has him torn between guilt and desire and right and wrong. Michael’s wife Sarah is blindsided by his affair. Throughout her struggle to deal with the truth she must find a way to maintain her sanity and strengthen her children for the fiery events ahead. She holds on to her faith amidst the turmoil that plagues her family and her church. Michael abandons his church, family, and home for his new life with his lover Jimmy. His one choice sets off a firestorm of events that will consume everyone in its path.

So, given the graphics on the movie’s homepage and the references to fire in the synopsis, is it too much to hope that the movie’s characters are literally destroyed by fire? That would elevate this project to all-new levels of so-bad-it’s-goodness.

I wonder if the gay interloper gets offered a virgin daughter to rape in this version?

I still can’t get over the fact that the filmmakers actually called their anti-homosexuality polemic Sodom and Gomorrah. Up until now I’d credited Chrsitian right “artists” with a little more subtlety (although, having read several volumes of the Left Behind series, I have no idea why).

Sunday night I went to an ordination service. It’s not the first one I’ve attended, but it’s the first one I’ve attended as a critically-thinking adult. The other times were when I was a kid, including my own father’s, which I don’t remember at all save for the photographs which allow me to manufacture memories based on the images of my three-year-old self in white tights.

This ordination was for my old youth pastor, who’s still youth pastor, but after seven years has completed his Calvinist seminary education.

There’s a strict and boring order of service to these things, the lowlight of which being a talk by some pastor guy that went on and on. In truth it was only fifteen minutes (I was checking the clock, believe me), but seemed waaaaaay longer. That’s what happens, my dad says, when you try to preach without notes! You have to be a really good speaker to speak without notes and not make an ass of yourself. This particular pastor guy was not one of those speakers.

That’s the explanation my dad offered for why this pastor guy, when talking about young pastors going out into the world, referred to all the “young men” God has blessed us with to serve as pastors. Our denomination is loathe to ordain women, we all know this, but can we at least keep up some sort of rhetorical pretense of equality?! Again, my dad blamed this slip of the tongue on the pastor guy’s lack of notes, but I blame it on systemic sexism and idiocy.

Back when I went to bible college (a denominational one), there was a little bit of a kerfuffle when the dean of students was planning to leave her job with the college and go teach at a seminary in Brazil. Despite the fact that any man with her qualifications would have been ordained already, the denomination only saw fit to ordain her before her big missions thing to Brazil in the name of expediency, since ordained clergy have an easier time with immigration bureaucracy.

The dean of academics spoke out on her behalf, calling the situation for what it was: sexist, and racist. Sexist for the obvious reasons, and racist because why was a woman good enough to teach non-white people in Brazil but not good enough to teach white people men in North America?

Just once in my life I want to have a woman pastor. The church I currently attend has three full-time pastors and they’re all men. I could leave this church, I guess, but if all the feminists leave then how are things going to change? I don’t know.

I’ve been wondering for awhile when and if the point will come when I’ll have to leave this particular church, when what I believe and what they believe will be too far apart for me to have a place in the community. What draws me there now is the familiarity, the people I’ve known since I was five.

I was raised some of these concerns with my small group the other week, and they immediately launched into a litany of praise of me, outlining how much they appreciated my contrary and slightly disruptive presence in their group. But I wasn’t fishing for compliments; I’m serious. I don’t know how long it will last, you know? A year, two, three… but eventually something’s going to have to give.

Then again, that night after the ordination service, I had a really good talk with my dad and brother and realized that the gap between their theology and mine may not be as wide as I thought it was. And at least they’re both feminists, though they’d never admit it or label themselves as such. But trust me, they are. (We can smell our own.)

What happened was I heard about Geez magazine from the parish. Working in the print media industry myself, I know what an audacious venture a magazine is, and how difficult it is to keep one running. So with a cursory glance at the preview pages available on the website I ordered a subscription. Not realizing, bizarrely, that the magazine is based out of my own home town! How terrifically unexpected!

Knowing Winnipeg as I do, I said to myself, “Hm, a progressive Christian magazine. Fifty theoretical bucks (because Christians don’t gamble) says it’s run by MENNONITES.” And it is. Noting the return address on the envelope, I saw that Geez is based not only out of Winnipeg’s Granola Belt, but out of one of the hippiest streets in the Granola Belt! (Home Street, that is, though I know some might make the case for Ethelbert or Evanson Streets).

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that I dig Mennonites. I want to marry a Mennonite, a goal which, in my part of the world, where every second person is a Friesen or Thiessen or Dyck or Funk, would be seemingly easy except for the fact that so many Mennonite boys are baseball-cap-wearing conservatives and so many of the girls are straight. (Mennonites come in many different flavours, though, religious and non-, straight and gay, so I hold out hope).

I myself am only a few villages in Russia away from being Mennonite myself and am forever disappointed that I can’t quite claim that cultural heritage for my own, though I did grow up German Baptist which is really close.

Now, the Mennonites are just as effed up as any other denomination/sect, but what makes me hold admiration for them which I do not for other groups is the social justice and peace traditions that are intrinsic to Mennonite faith.

But none of this has anything to do with Geez. Except for the social justice stuff which comes through beautifully in the magazine. It’s a very good-looking magazine — full-colour cover, black and white pages. Thought-provoking, subversive imagery througout. I’m not going to bring up the words “postmodern” or “emergent” because those are stupid descriptors that no one really understands anyway. If you don’t like this magazine, it’s because it’s not made for you. This magazine is made for me. And only me. No, what I mean is that it’s meant to speak to people like me who are interested in looking at Christianity and faith in new ways, casting a critical eye on the institutions associated therewith, and having pretty pictures at which to look. And irony. Lots of irony.

I’m always on the lookout for style masquerading as substance. Geez has plenty of style, but if that’s all there were I could have burned through the mag in one sitting. The articles are all quite short, but I don’t consider that a liability necessarily, especially since I have a pathetic attention span. They’re short but meaty. Or proteiny, tofu-y, if you’re vegetarian and dislike my previous metaphor. Some are more tofu-y than others. Some are longer than others, too, and I think in the future the magazine could benefit from lengthier pieces, along the lines of my all-time favourite magazine, Bitch. Speaking of Bitch (A Feminist Response to Pop Culture), Geez gets a million points from me for mentioning my favourite magazine in a positive light, in a chart expressing “Gospel Dilution Index,” i.e., the percentage of any magazine that’s devoted to advertising. Christianity Today weighs in at 44%, Bitch at 12%, and Geez, currently, at zero.

Perhaps the magazine’s only striking liability is the one-page tutorial on how to make your own home altar, but if I weren’t familiar with and skeptical of emergent mumbo-jumbo, I probably would have thought that was cool rather than cliché.

What I did love about the magazine is the amount of new stuff — that is, stuff I haven’t heard before. Marshall McLuhan (Peg City Represent) as Prophet. John Francis, revolutionary planet-walker. Revenge/forgiveness in Haiti. Then there’s the Diana Thorneycroft, non-pukey poetry, Maude Barlow, Emily Carr, Arundhati Roy, Michelle Shocked. These are the kinds of voices you find in Geez and freakin’ dig it.

Speaking of voices — the guys who do this magazine are just that, guys, which is slightly unfortunate due to the fact that too many voices in progressive Chrisitian publishing are male. But it’s not Will Braun and Aiden Enns’ fault they were born male, and I think they’ve put together content with enough diversity to make up for it — an United Church clergywoman, a black American writer/peace activist. Plenty of women all around. I don’t think the content gender split is quite at 50/50, but I haven’t made a tallychart, which I normally would have done, but I’m on Geez’s side, here, so I’m willing to let it slide for the moment. Maybe for issue #2 I’ll get out the calculator.

Some of your favourite bloggers appear, as well, including I Married the Pastor’s deceptive ditziness.

There’s no such thing as the perfect magazine (well, except for maybe Bitch), but I’m proud to be a Geez supporter. Those Mennonite boys. They make good every most of the time. If you haven’t done, subscribe now.

In the comments to my previous post, wasp jerky made the most delightful and thought-provoking comment:

I never cease to be amused that so many churches are squeamish about homosexuals in their congregations, yet have no problem with bankers. The Bible condemns usury and even calls it an abomination. Where’s the “God hates bankers” movement?

This issue resonates with me for a few reasons. First of all, biblical Christian financial ethics are one area with which I have little quarrel. Jesus preached a lot about money, and his teachings sure sound good (and, of course, extremely challenging). Also, the two gentlemen who lead my bible study group (one does it more often than the other) both work for bank! Can you believe it? Though the second only joined the ranks of the sellouts recently, having grown tired of not being able to make a living at the health-care job for which he trained and having to work part-time shifts at the gas station where he’s worked since he was a teenager. Which is totally understandable and I’m thrilled for him. He is one of my favourite people ever in the world. I’ve known him since I was five, and you know how most people suck when they go through the awkward teenage years? He didn’t. He was cool and kind and fun even then. He’s that awesome. (Also, the first banker and bible study leader got him the job in the first place. See? Christian community at work! I’ve gotten jobs from church people, too, and it’s a nice effect.)

Anyway. I’m ruminating about these things in case they should come up in the context of our formal study. Inasmuch as our study is anything resembling “formal” with me cracking jokes all the time. I try to keep it to a dull roar, I swear. Wait, I don’t swear, Jesus says to make no oaths, let your yes be yes. (I pay attention sometimes.)

Because we are North American Christians, we can’t have a bible study or small group without having study guide books. The book we’ve been going through this fall was selected by the first banker: The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn.

At first I was relieved by this choice. I was afraid we’d end up with some study that would stir up the controversial issues, on which my perspectives most certainly differ from the rest of the group. (By “controversial issues,” I mean the usual, you know, homos, fetus-killing, but also more esoteric things like the Nature of Salvation and whatnot.)

I’m down with Jesus’ teaching on money, and I’m sure you know that Jesus preached a lot more about money than he did about homos, or, for that matter, sex. Interesting, no?

Now, the first banker’s intentions were totally good in choosing Alcorn’s slight volume. We in our group are all young, and good financial habits are best made early. Everyone, even the heathens, agrees that giving money away is good. Hell, pathological corporations give away money because it makes them look good. That tells you something. Philanthropy and charity are as nearly universally-held as any value can be in our society.

I’d been meaning to make a separate, longer post about Alcorn’s book and maybe I still will. Actually, I can say with a good deal of certainty that I will, because there was one point early in the book where the content almost made me puke. (How’s that for a teaser?) But for now I’ll suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased to find that my dyed-in-the-wool evangelical comrades increasingly took issue with The Treasure Principle. Partly for its obnoxious style — you know, it’s the kind of study guide that has you look up eighteen different verses, with no regard for context, to answer one question to which the answer is obvious (well, to which the “right,” proscribed answer is obvious). We all grew increasingly annoyed by the book’s focus on heavenly reward, but as I said, that’s a story for another day.

Let’s go back to wasp jerky’s original comment. “Usury” isn’t a word you hear very often, so let’s get a definition on the table:

u·su·ry (yū’zhə-rē)
n., pl. -ries.

1. The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.
2. An excessive or illegally high rate of interest charged on borrowed money.
3. Archaic. Interest charged or paid on a loan.

It’s not like I’m going to go up to the first banker, point my finger, and say, “YOU, SIR, ARE GUILTY OF USURY! YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD!” and slap him on the cheek with a white glove or something. Under the modern definition, what banks do is not usury (those money stores, on the other hand, are a different matter). However, under the old definition, the biblical definition, any interest charged is usury. Not just the 18% credit card rate, not just the 50% money mart rate, but a measly 1%, or 0.0001%.

But the definintion has changed, as lexis continuously does, as culture continuously does.

A couple years ago, back when I was divorced from Jesus, a good friend came out of the closet, in a move that surprised no one (well, it did surprise some people, but most of the people he knows are Christians and generally Christians can’t recognize gay if you paint their house with it). I asked him if he were still a Christian. He said he was. I said, how? (I was pro-homo at that point, see, but I figured my pro-homo-ness and Christianity were incompatible.) He said, well, when biblical writers used the word “homosexuality,” they probably didn’t really relate it to the concept of two people in a committed, loving, mutually-beneficial, ethical relationship creating a home together.

I relate the “sin” of homosexuality to the “sin” of usury here to ask, if we can change the definition of the latter word, why can’t we change the definition of the former?

Just a question.

(Some of my favourite people are bankers.)

Things in which I am interested:
• In-depth discussion of theological concepts
• Questioning the “fundamental” tenets of Christianity (but not with the implicit precept being that in the end we’ll all discover what we believe was Right All Along)
• Entertaining the thought that maybe there is not just one “right” way to practice Christianity

Things in which I am not interested:
• The same old religion repackaged in a fancier way, either with orgiastic worship or lots of ancient rituals and shit
• Pithy responses to serious questions (”Just trust in Jesus.” “God will win in the end.”)
• Christianity that agrees with political and economic conservatism

Tonight I had a discussion with a man who believes that our society is built around Christian concepts and believes, in terms of the legal system and such. I said no freakin’ way. We live in a capitalist society, and capitalism requires inequality and explotation to function. Inequality and exploitation are completely in opposition to the teachings of Christ. Capitalists say that the market can provide for all, but obviously that doesn’t happen. Our society is built around our economy, and the economy is not Christian in its values. Yes, philanthropy and humanitarianism is valued in our Western culture by Christians and others alike, but no amount of philanthropy that is currently done is enough to balance the inequalities, and certainly is not enough to prevent those inequalities from occuring in the first place.

But then again I am a young woman and he is a middle-aged man; both of our positions in life cause us to lean towards leftism and conservatism, respectively. And don’t get me wrong, I love this man. He is a wonderful person and a valued member of my faith community. He also works in upper management at a bank. (Heh, I feel like right-wingers who say, “Some of my friends are homosexual.” Now I can say, “Some of my friends are conservative capitalists!” And he is a really great guy, you’d love him.)